What are the limitations of Shopify markets?

Shopify Markets is an incredible feature that allows you to localize your store experience for customers when selling internationally. It’s especially useful if you’re selling to countries with different primary currencies and languages.

We’ve already covered the basics of Shopify Markets in a previous article: Cross-border selling: Choosing between Shopify Markets and a multi-store Shopify structure.

In this article, we’ll focus solely on the limitations of using Shopify Markets.

1. Manual payment methods – final prices are charged in the store currency, not in the local currency

Even if you’re using Shopify Payments and your customers can place orders in their local currency (if configured), this setting does not apply to manual payment methods.

For example, if you’ve enabled Cash on Delivery (COD) and your store currency is EUR, a customer from the US will see the final price in USD, but the actual amount charged will be converted and processed in EUR, as shown on the screenshot below.

Additional payment methods like Klarna or local gateways such as GoPay or Blik also charge the final amount in the store’s main currency, not in the customer’s local currency (payments in local currency are only possible when using Shopify Payments and paying by card or via Paypal).

2. Payout account

Unless you’re on the Advanced or Shopify Plus plan and located in an eligible region, you can only connect one payout account when using Shopify Payments. All payouts will then be processed in your store’s primary currency.

This means that even if you sell in multiple currencies, all transactions will be converted to your store currency before being paid out. For example, if your store currency is EUR and you receive an order in USD (with Shopify Payments set up to accept local currencies), the payout will still be converted to EUR — typically with a currency conversion fee of around 2%.

Please note that even with the Advanced or Plus plan, Shopify applies multi-currency payout fees, typically ranging from 1% to 1.5%, depending on your location and plan. You can learn more about these fees and eligible regions in this official document from Shopify.

3. Gift cards

Unfortunately, gift cards are always issued in the store’s primary currency, such as EUR. This means that when a customer purchases a gift card in USD, they are actually buying a gift card denominated in EUR — they’re simply paying in USD based on the current exchange rate.

This can be slightly improved by setting manual exchange rate (like USD against EUR) in your store settings. However, this comes with trade-offs — while the conversions remain consistent, you lose the benefit of automatic price updates in response to exchange rate fluctuations.

4. Multiple domains = one sender email

If you’re connecting separate domains to different markets, keep in mind that while this is possible, transactional emails (such as order confirmation email) cannot be sent from each market’s specific domain. Shopify only allows one sender email address to be used for your store’s outgoing emails.

5. Not all apps support multi-language/multi-currency stores

If your store is available in multiple languages, don’t forget to double-check whether the apps you’re using support a multi-language setup. Make sure that, for example, app widgets can be translated, and that emails sent by the apps can also be localized accordingly.

6. Feeds

Shopify does not automatically create market-specific product feeds. The built-in integrations only support one Google and one Meta (Facebook) account. So, if you want to run localized ads in multiple markets, you’ll need a third-party app to generate separate feeds for each one — and these apps typically come with a monthly subscription fee.

Beyond these limitations, you may also encounter additional issues depending on the features you use. For example, emails sent via the Shopify Email app cannot be fully translated, and automatic discounts don’t support translated names. There are also a few other minor limitations you might run into.

As mentioned earlier, Shopify Markets is an incredible tool that allows merchants to start selling globally without major overhead. However, it does come with certain constraints. If you’re growing in a specific market or aiming to offer a fully localized customer experience from the beginning, it might be worth considering a separate store for that market. (If you’re on Shopify Plus, you can take advantage of expansion stores for this purpose.)